The majority of automatic garage doors have a manual release to control your door when there is no power. This is usually a long red rope that hangs from the track of your door. Pulling this red rope will release the trolley from the garage door track and enable you to use your door manually.
If you've recently experienced a power outage or surge, it may have damaged the electrical circuits that are responsible for opening and closing your garage door. This type of damage can lead to the garage door opening on its own — usually in a completely erratic manner. There's no easy fix for this issue.
The single most important takeaway here is this – never leave your garage door open longer than absolutely necessary. From thieves to pests to weather, it can wreak havoc on your life.
Pull the Emergency Release Cord
Pull the release cord towards the door. This compresses the spring lever and allows the components of your door to connect. Once your home regains power, close the door. The door must be completely closed before the opener can reconnect and begin opening automatically.
Unless you have built-in precautions against this, you can straighten out a wire hanger and insert it through the top of the garage door. Feel around until you reach the emergency latch. If you can hook the cord, slowly pull on it. Once the safety release is disengaged, you can roll the door up manually.
Many electronic garage doors come with a bypass switch, allowing you to override the system and manually lift it open when needed. To locate the bypass switch, look for a red rope hanging down from your garage mechanisms. This emergency release cord will be attached to the trolley in the center of the garage door.
Your battery backup will ensure that your garage door will function even during a power outage. While it is possible to open and close your garage door manually, some things can go wrong. Your garage door is made of many different parts and if mishandled while trying to operate it manually can lead to a costly repair.
Pull the Cord Towards the Interior of Your Garage
This means that the opener is disengaged, and you can safely operate the door manually. You can also pull the cord toward you and the interior of your home to verify that the spring is, in fact, elongated.
If after a power outage, your garage door still doesn't work, it doesn't mean that there is an issue with your garage door opener or garage door. It is just about raising the garage door, pulling the emergency release cord, and then pushing the control button.
The most common scenario is a misalignment of the photoelectric reversal system. When the two sensor housings are out of alignment, the beam is cut off, which the door opener interprets as an object in the way of the door's descent. As a result, it automatically reopens the door.
As a homeowner, you need to know that a burglar can open a closed roll up garage door in seconds, with just a small block of wood and a coat hanger; that's it! This garage door safety release mechanism can be tripped from outside your garage door with nothing more than a coat hanger.
A burglar can open a garage door from the outside in a matter of seconds with nothing more than a wire coat hanger. All they have to do is use a tool to pry open the top edge of the door, drive the hanger through the opening, grab the cord with the hook and pull.
If someone has hacking skills and a device called a code grabber (records the code sent by an opener), they can easily hack into your system and open your garage door. Typically, the intruder will leave a code grabber hidden near your garage door when you are not present.
A double-skinned roller garage door provides extra protection against forced entry. Make sure the bottom slat is strong and durable, as this is where most thieves will try to breach your garage door. You can also invest in extra locks and bolts, making it harder for burglars to dislodge the door.
If your door is a manual door and doesn't have a motorised opener, then yes: you can very easily open the door from the inside and the outside. If the door is locked, however, and you're on the outside of it, you're going to have some trouble opening it.
If your garage door doesn't work after a power outage, stay calm. Every modern garage should come with an emergency release kit, a system installed into your garage that allows you to manually open the door from the inside or outside.